Wood Partners Starts Apartment Development in Suburban Denver

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

Englewood, Colo.—Wood Partners has broken ground on Alta Cherry Hills, a 306-unit apartment community in suburban Denver. The infill project, which will include two five-story buildings on 4.6 acres, should be complete and open for leasing by summer 2014.

Studio PBA designed the community, which will feature 191 one-bedroom units (at 758 square feet), 103 two-bedroom units (1,160 square feet) and 12 three-bedroom units (1,368 square feet). Alta Cherry Hills’ amenities will include a rooftop deck, dog park and dog wash, bike and ski shop, resort-style pool and spa, clubhouse and fitness center. The community is also being built to LEED standards.

The property is in the Englewood municipality, an affluent suburb south of downtown Denver. It’s being built on the site of the former Flood Middle School, which first opened in 1920, and has been closed since 2007.

In 2012, Colorado-based Solidcore Partners LLC acquired the property from the Englewood School District. Solidcore had the property re-zoned and completed the demolition of the existing structure in the summer of 2013. Immediately after that, Wood Partners acquired the property from Solidcore.

Denver, like most major metro areas in the West, has seen enough population and job growth to sustain a wave of new apartment construction. According to investment specialist Marcus & Millichap, vacancies in metro Denver will end this year at 4.4 percent, down 60 basis points from 2012. Vacancy also dropped 60 basis points last year. Builders will complete 4,600 new units by the end of the year, for an increase of 2 percent of market inventory.